People search for this comparison because both names come up when an indie producer asks "what software do I need," and both touch the budget, though they do different jobs. Wrapbook is where money leaves the production: crew get hired, timecards get approved, payroll gets funded, invoices get paid. Storiara is where the plan gets made before any of that happens. A production of any real size will end up with something in each seat.
What each one is for
Wrapbook describes itself as production payroll and accounting in one system. A producer or production accountant creates the project, sends startwork, and approves timecards as they come in. Non-union payroll can be run immediately, union payroll goes to a Wrapbook paymaster for review, and costs flow into cost reports and the general ledger. Wrapbook also acts as the payroll company of record through its employer-of-record service, and it offers insurance, union compliance, and incentives help on top.
Storiara is for the weeks before that. You upload the script, check the extracted scenes and elements, drag scenes onto a stripboard, and get a cast Day Out of Days. The budget module turns those days, your cast and crew rates, and tier tables into a top sheet with ATL, BTL, post, and other sections. Call sheets come off the schedule once you're shooting.
Where Wrapbook is the right tool and Storiara isn't
Anything involving paying people or proving you paid them correctly:
- Startwork. Wrapbook builds packets with deal memos and NDAs, collects e-signatures, and tracks I-9s, W-4s, and wage notices. Crew profiles carry over between jobs, so a gaffer you rehire doesn't redo an I-9. Storiara stores cast and crew contact details and rates, but no tax forms or signatures.
- Timecards. Crew submit hours, expenses, per diems, and kit fees in the iOS app, approvals route to the right people in order, and hours-to-gross calculates as you go. Storiara has nothing like this.
- Union compliance. Wrapbook says it handles pension, health, and welfare contributions for SAG-AFTRA, DGA, IATSE, and Teamsters and has in-house union paymasters. Storiara's budget uses union rate tables for estimates, and those tables shouldn't be treated as current official rates.
- Actuals. Wrapbook reads invoices, matches them to purchase orders, and updates the ledger, so the cost report reflects real spend. Storiara's budget has no actuals, no POs, and no variance tracking.
Where Storiara does work Wrapbook doesn't
Wrapbook's site doesn't list script breakdown, scheduling, or call sheets, and those are most of what Storiara does. The piece that connects to Wrapbook's world is the budget. Because Storiara counts paid days from the DOOD, an actor's schedule change shows up in the cast line.
Here is how that works on a fictional 18-day non-union feature. Your lead is SW on Day 1, works Days 1 to 4, holds Days 5 and 6, and finishes on Day 7 (WF). That's seven paid days. At a $400 day rate, cast wages are 7 x $400 = $2,800, and Storiara's default non-union cast fringe of 13.5% adds $378, for $3,178. Move her Day 7 scene to Day 4 and she becomes SW on Day 1 and WF on Day 4: four paid days, $1,600 plus $216 in fringe, $1,816. Wrapbook will later pay whatever the timecards say, but the scheduling decision that cut $1,362 happened on the board.
Where the budget and the payroll company meet
Storiara's budget estimates the costs that a payroll company will later make real. Fringes appear as a column on each line, using defaults by tier (13.5% for non-union below-the-line crew, higher for union tiers). Cast lines use 17.5% for union and 13.5% for non-union, or the fringe from a performer's selected contract. Overheads include a payroll service fee line under account 6820, calculated as a flat percentage. Neither is a payroll tax calculation, and Storiara doesn't calculate employer taxes by state.
Once you've picked a payroll provider, replace those estimates with real numbers. Ask the provider for its fee structure, the employer tax and workers' comp rates it will apply in your shooting state, and how it bills union pension and health contributions. Then edit the fringe and 6820 lines by hand; Storiara keeps manual edits when you sync the budget from story data again. Wrapbook's free payroll estimator gives a labor cost with fringes included, which is a reasonable cross-check before you have a formal quote.
The reverse also holds. If the accountant's cost report in week two shows camera running over, the fix is often a schedule change, and that happens back on the board.
One task, two tools: hiring a 22-person crew for the first week
In Storiara, the line producer adds crew in Cast & Crew with their department, union status, and rate, or imports a spreadsheet. The budget syncs those rates into the BTL lines (3200 Lighting, 3300 Camera, and so on) while keeping any manual edits. The crew list is on the call sheets automatically, and each person can fill in availability through a no-login link with Google Calendar busy times.
In Wrapbook, the same line producer invites those 22 people to the project by email or posts a QR code at the production office. Each person completes startwork on their phone, and the dashboard shows who is missing a W-4. Deal memo fields can be routed to specific approvers. At the end of the week, timecards come in through the app, department heads approve, and payroll runs.
Because nothing connects the two, the crew records get entered twice, and that double entry is the main cost of running both today.
Handing off between them
There's no integration. The workable handoff is:
- Export the Storiara budget to Excel and give it to the accountant as the approved budget to track against.
- Export or copy the crew list with rates; Wrapbook's crew profiles take over from there.
- Keep the schedule and call sheets in Storiara through the shoot, and keep timecards and payroll in Wrapbook.
Wrapbook's own free tools (a rate finder, a payroll estimator, and an incentives finder) are worth a look while you're still budgeting, whatever you plan in.
How to decide
Most productions that pay a crew will end up with both kinds of tool. If you need to pay people, you need a payroll provider, and Wrapbook is one option. If you need to break down a script and plan shoot days, Storiara covers that. A self-producing short with volunteers may not need payroll at all, and a production with a scheduler and budget already done in other software may only need Wrapbook. The compare hub has more pairings, and the crew deal memo template and fringes glossary entry cover the paperwork between the two.